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Dean  of  the  College  of  Agriculture  and  Director  of 
the  Agricultural  Experiment  Station, 


WHAT  IT  IS  AND  WHAT  IT  MEANS 


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AN  ADDRESS 

BaL  by 


E.  DAVENPORT 


University  of  Illinois 


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URBANA,  ILLINOIS 


This  address  was  delivered  first  at  the  dedication 
of  the  Agricultural  Building,  University  of  Maine, 
January  20;  and  read  as  here  printed  at  the  Illinois 
5tate  Farmers  Institute,  Rockford,  Illinois,  February 
24,  1909. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT 

OF 

AMERICAN  AGRICULTURE 

WHAT  IT  IS  AND  WHAT  IT  MEANS 


Agriculture  is  a  remarkable  occupation  for  a  number  of 
significant  reasons: 

1.  It  engages  the  time  and  attention  of  half  our  people 
and  it  will  always  absorb  the  lives  and  energies  of  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  race. 

2.  This  is  the  only  considerable  calling  in  which  the 
home  is  situated  in  close  connection  and  in  intimate  contact 
with  the  heart  of  the  business  so  that  all  members  of  the 
family,  men,  women  and  children  alike,  live  in  the  atmos¬ 
phere  of  the  occupation  and  each  finds  some  useful  part  to 
do  as  a  contribution  to  the  general  effort;  that  is,  agriculture 
is  not  only  an  occupation  but  a  mode  of  life  as  well,  and 
whatever  touches  and  uplifts  the  one  is  bound  to  powerfully 
react  upon  the  other. 

3.  The  conditions  of  country  life  are  peculiar  in  their 
contribution  to  health,  their  stimulus  to  personal  initiative 
and  their  fostering  influence  upon  that  spirit  of  individualism 
upon  which  rest  our  free  institutions  and  our  democratic 
government.  The  country  is  a  good  place  in  which  to  be 
born. 

4.  The  business  of  farming,  dealing  as  it  does  at  every 
step  with  the  subtlest  laws  of  nature,  is  capable  of  infinite 
improvement  and  of  indefinite  development  as  soon  and  as 
rapidly  as  the  findings  of  science  are  applied  to  its  affairs. 

5.  The  occupation  is,  and  from  the  nature  of  the  case 
must  always  remain  permanent,  because  all  men  forever 


2 


must  subscribe  to  the  decree  of  nature  and  eat,  for  food  is  the 
fuel  that  feeds  the  human  engine,  and  in  the  last  analysis 
our  future  development  as  a  race  will  be  conditioned  upon 
our  success  in  providing  an  assured  and  independent  food 
supply,  abundant  and  suitable  for  a  highly  developed  and 
always  advancing  civilization. 

6.  There  is,  therefore,  a  public  as  well  as  a  private  side 
to  this  matter  of  agricultural  development;  and  it  is  because 
of  this  public  and  exceptional  interest  in  this  particular  oc¬ 
cupation  that  we  have  established  and  maintained  at  public 
expense  in  every  state  of  the  Union  institutions  whose  busi¬ 
ness  it  is  not  only  to  instruct  in  the  most  advanced  methods 
of  agricultural  practice,  but  also  to  conduct  research  through 
experiments  by  the  most  approved  methods  with  a  view  of 
adding  to  our  knowledge  of  the  scientific  facts  and  principles 
upon  which  further  development  of  agriculture  and  of 
country  life  may  be  established. 

It  is  exceedingly  important  that  the  aims  and  purposes 
of  this  modern  educational  movement  be  clearly  understood 
and  especially  that  they  be  not  misunderstood. 

First  of  all  the  purpose  of  agricultural  education  and  re¬ 
search  is  not  to  benefit  the  farmer  as  an  individual  or  even 
farmers  as  a  favored  class.  The  principal  aim  of  other  forms 
of  education  in  the  past  was  to  benefit  their  devotees  person¬ 
ally  without  much  regard  to  the  consequences,  either  public 
or  private.  Not  so  with  this  form  of  education.  Its  primary 
purpose  is  the  development  of  agriculture  as  a  productive 
occupation  and  incidentally  and  necessarily  of  the  people 
who  live  by  farming.  In  other  words,  its  first  objective  is 
distinctly  a  public  one,  and  all  other  considerations  are 
secondary  and  subsidiary. 

Now  the  public  is  not  interested  in  the  question  whether 
John  Smith  succeeds  or  fails  at  farming:  indeed,  it  does  not 
care  whether  he  farms  at  all  or  what  he  does  or  does  not  do 
so  long  as  he  does  not  become  a  public  charge  and  so  long 
as  he  continues  to  contribute  some  share  to  the  public  good. 

But  the  public  is  interested  that  somebody  should  sue- 


3 


ceed  in  farming.  More  than  that,  it  is  interested  that 
enough  should  succeed  and  that  they  should  succeed  well 
enough  to  operate  the  land  to  the  best  advantage  and  provide 
an  assured  food  supply  for  all  the  people.  Now  the  lands 
cannot  be  operated  to  the  best  advantage  by  an  ignorant 
peasantry.  Only  men  of  good  parts  educated  in  the  princi¬ 
ples  involved  can  handle  these  lands  in  such  a  way  as  to 
secure  a  maximum  of  human  and  animal  food  at  the  least 
expense  and  at  the  same  time  preserve  their  producing 
power  against  future  needs. 

And  so  it  is  that  the  aims  and  purposes  of  agricultural 
education  and  research  are  primarily  the  promotion  of 
public  safety  in  the  matter  of  a  racial  food  supply,  to  which 
matter  the  education  and  information  of  individuals  is  an 
essential  but  subsidiary  incident:  which  incident,  however, 
is  certain  to  result  in  producing  a  country  population  of  a 
superior  type,  all  of  which  also  reacts  powerfully  upon  the 
public  good  in  matters  both  social  and  political. 

In  the  last  analysis  and  reduced  to  the  lowest  terms, 
therefore,  the  fundamental  purpose  of  agricultural  education 
and  research  is  the  development  of  agriculture  as  a  produc¬ 
tive  occupation  and  of  the  agricultural  people  as  a  numerous 
and  important  part  of  the  social  and  political  fabric. 

Development  is,  therefore,  the  central  thought  in  educa¬ 
tional  activity  along  agricultural  lines  to-day  and  the  devel¬ 
opment  of  American  agriculture  to  its  highest  attainable 
estate  both  as  a  business  and  as  a  mode  of  life  is  the  high 
purpose  for  which  the  agricultural  colleges  and  experiment 
stations  were  founded  and  are  supported  by  a  far-seeing  and 
liberal-minded  public.  It  is  profitable,  and  in  every  way 
highly  important  that  we  all  pause  a  moment  from  time  to 
time  to  gain  the  clearest  and  most  comprehensive  understand¬ 
ing  possible  of  all  that  is  involved  in  so  important  a  matter. 
Accordingly,  that  we  may  all  alike  be  intelligent  and  work 
together  to  a  common  end,  I  invite  your  attention  somewhat 
carefully  to  the  details  of  this  development  which  may  be 


4 


briefly  outlined  under  six  fairly  definite  propositions  as 
follows: 

1.  An  Agriculture  Profitable.  The  first  step  in  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  any  business  is  to  “make  it  pay”.  Whatever 
we  may  say  about  the  glories  of  country  life,  and  it  is  much; 
whatever  the  songs  we  sing  of  the  free  air,  the  twittering 
birds  and  the  blessed  sunshine,  and  they  are  many;  after  all 
and  before  all,  farming  is  a  business  as  well  as  a  mode  of 
life,  and  the  first  and  the  fundamental  step  in  its  develop¬ 
ment  is  to  put  it  on  a  paying  basis.  Our  colleges  and  our  ex¬ 
periment  stations  have  done  well,  therefore,  to  devote  their 
first,  and  up  to  this  time  their  principal  efforts  to  the  business 
of  increasing  the  profits  of  farming.  In  the  past,  farming 
was  not  a  capitalized  industry  and  such  a  thing  as  failure  was 
almost  impossible.  From  now  on,  however,  farming  is  to  be 
a  capitalized  occupation  and  failure  will  be  relatively  easy; 
for  the  new  discoveries  of  science,  while  they  tend  to  es¬ 
tablish  the  business  on  a  sounder  basis,  do  not  make  it  easier 
in  the  sense  of  better  adapting  it  to  the  novice  or  to  men  of 
low  capacity.  Agriculture  is  rapidly  becoming  more  difficult, 
calling  not  for  less  but  for  more,  of  brains,  of  knowledge 
and  of  executive  ability,  and  as  such  it  is  rapidly  challenging 
the  attention  of  the  brightest  men,  who  will  be  attracted 
into  the  calling  about  in  proportion  as  they  can  feel  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  reasonable  profits. 

No  business  can  hold  the  respect  and  the  services  of 
men  of  ability  except  it  afford  them  a  reasonable  reward  for 
what  they  put  into  it,  and  certainly  no  occupation  can 
commend  itself  to  ambitious  young  men  until  it  offers  prom¬ 
ise  of  a  good  and  reliable  income. 

In  this  connection  it  is  most  significant  to  note  the 
increased  respect  for  agriculture  and  the  new  interest  in 
farming  and  in  country  life  that  commenced  to  spring  up 
among  all  classes  almost  immediately  upon  the  work  of  the 
college  and  station  in  showing  how  to  begin  to  put  this 
business  on  a  scientific  and  paying  basis,  and  it  is  significant, 
too,  that  we  now  hear  less  and  see  less  of  the  drift  from  the 


5 


farm  to  the  town,  and  that  men  of  sound  business  sense  and 
wide  experience  are  beginning  to  look  to  the  land  and  to 
agriculture  not  only  as  a  safe  business  but  in  every  way  as  a 
desirable  occupation.  This  is  the  main  influence  that  will 
regulate  the  flow  from  the  country  to  the  town  and  hold  in 
check  that  insane  rush  of  young  men  cityward  that  we  have 
all  deplored  for  these  many  years. 

2.  An  Agriculture  Productive.  It  is  not  enough  that 
agriculture  should  be  profitable.  In  its  development  it  must 
also  become  in  the  very  near  future  enormously  productive. 
How  pressing  this  point  will  shortly  become  few  people  are 
able  to  realize,  so  abundantly  have  the  virgin  soils  of  this 
country  produced  in  the  past;  so  boundless  have  been  their 
extent  and  so  small  has  our  population  been  almost  up  to 
the  present  day. 

A  little  careful  consideration,  however,  will  speedily 
show  that  conditions  in  this  respect  are  to  undergo  a  funda¬ 
mental  change  in  the  very  near  future  indeed. 

Under  good  conditions,  the  human  animal  can  double 
his  numbers  every  twenty -Awe  years.  By  the  aid  of  im¬ 
migration  and  despite  the  ravages  of  four  wars,  we  have 
maintained  this  rate  of  increase  in  this  country  since  the 
Revolution  and  the  population  of  the  United  States  doubled 
four  times  in  the  last  hundred  years.  If  we  maintain  this 
rate  of  increase  for  another  century — and  something  is  wrong 
if  we  do  not — if  we  maintain  this  rate  of  increase  we  should 
have  in  this  country  a  hundred  years  from  now  no  less  than 
twelve  hundred  millions  of  people,  a  hundred  millions  of 
whom  should  live  in  Illinois.  Under  these  conditions  not 
less  than  thirty  millions  should  live  in  the  state  of  Maine, — 
that  is,  the  population  of  the  entire  United  States  at  the 
time  of  the  Civil  War  would  then  be  crowded  into  a  single 
one  of  our  smaller  states  and  that  within  the  present 
century. 

For  various  reasons  this  ratio  of  increase  cannot  much 
longer  be  maintained,  yet  it  is  the  natural  rate  and  it  tends 
to  show  us  what  would  come  about  under  normal  conditions 


6 


within  a  century, — and  what  is  a  century  in  the  life  history 
of  a  people? 

Believe  me,  race  suicide  if  it  comes  will  be  due  not  to  a 
failure  of  the  birth  rate:  it  will  be  from  our  sheer  neglect  to 
maintain  conditions  that  will  insure  food  for  the  people. 
This  is  the  form  of  race  suicide  against  which  we  need  most 
to  protect  ourselves,  and  it  is  none  too  soon  to  begin.  The 
world  has  not  yet  learned  how  to  feed  such  a  population  as 
is  just  ahead  and  before  the  present  century  is  ended  the 
largest  single  public  issue  will  be  that  of  bread. 

Within  the  lifetime  of  children  born  to-day,  scarcity  of 
labor  will  be  a  matter  of  history,  and  abundance  of  cheap 
food  will  be  a  tale  that  is  told  by  the  gran’ther  in  his  chim¬ 
ney  corner  dozing  in  his  dotage.  We  are  educating  in  our 
schools  to-day  a  generation  of  children  to  live  a  life  that  we 
ourselves  have  never  seen  and  that  history  does  not  record, 
and  we  do  well  if  we  soberly  calculate  what  their  conditions 
of  life  are  likely  to  be  and  mend  our  methods  accordingly. 

We  were  three  hundred  years  in  getting  a  population  of 
five  millions  of  people,  so  slowly  do  numbers  pile  up  when 
the  base  is  small,  whatever  the  ratio,  but  we  have  increased 
ninety  millions  in  the  last  hundred  years.  I  very  well 
remember  when  our  population  was  but  thirty  millions  and 
I  am  no  relative  of  Methusaleh,  either.  Many  of  you  re¬ 
member  when  it  was  but  fifteen,  but  now  it  has  reached  ap¬ 
proximately  one  hundred  millions.  With  such  a  base  and 
with  modern  conditions  of  life,  this  country  can  and  will  pro¬ 
duce  men  at  a  rate  the  world  has  never  seen.  We  can  now 
produce  in  this  country  as  much  increased  population  in  the 
next  twenty-five  years  as  we  produced  in  the  whole  four  hun¬ 
dred  years  since  its  discovery  by  white  men,  and  we  can 
produce  twice  as  many  more  in  the  next  twenty-five.  In 
fifty  years  from  now  we  shall  have  the  population  of  China 
in  this  country,  unless  something  goes  wrong,  and  it  is  the 
business  of  agriculture  to  learn  how  to  feed  them,  and  feed 
them  well.  When  it  has  learned  this,  it  will  have  learned 
many  a  lesson  the  colleges  do  not  now  know  how  to  teach. 


7 


We  have  thought  but  little  on  these  things  because  all 
of  our  experience  has  been  with  an  insufficient  population 
and  we  have  even  courted  immigration  as  a  source  of  labor. 
Had  you  thought  of  it?  with  our  present  population  matured 
we  can  in  ten  years  duplicate  every  emigrant  dead  or  alive 
that  ever  touched  this  country.  We  have  never  yet  been 
conscious  of  our  population  as  far  as  adults  are  concerned, 
because  we  have  had  room  and  food  and  labor  in  superabun¬ 
dance.  But  we  have  never  gone  up  against  such  numbers  as 
are  just  ahead, the  whisperings  of  whose  coming  may  be  found 
in  the  housing  and  the  teaching  of  our  now  enormous  child 
population.  When  Chicago  calls  for  eight  million  dollars 
worth  of  additional  public  school  buildings  in  the  next  two 
years,  you  hear  from  a  tide  of  young  humanity  whose  num¬ 
bers  and  reproducing  powers  will  make  new  problems  for 
our  race  and  for  its  agriculture  to  solve.  Not  the  least  of 
these  will  relate  to  the  power  of  the  land  to  produce  food  for 
man  and  the  animals  he  has  domesticated. 

Aye!  for  the  animals — there  is  another  rub.  We  revel 
now  in  the  luxury  of  animal  life.  Every  family  on  the  aver¬ 
age,  has  a  horse,  four  head  of  cattle,  four  sheep  and  four 
pigs  with  some  few  millions  to  spare.  They  literally  work 
and  eat  and  root  for  us  and  we  consume  their  bodies  and 
their  body  products  with  a  prodigality  that  no  dense  popu¬ 
lation  has  ever  yet  found  possible.  Now  animal  service  is 
an  expensive  luxury  when  food  becomes  costly.  Animal 
food  is  approximately  ten  times  as  expensive  as  vegetable; 
that  is  to  say,  it  takes  ten  pounds  of  grain  to  make  a  pound 
of  flesh,  which  is  no  more  valuable  for  supporting  life  than 
is  any  one  of  the  ten  pounds  of  grain  that  went  to  make  it. 

Our  descendants  will  face  the  day  when  they  must  sur¬ 
render  some  of  this  animal  life  as  surely  as  they  face  the 
day  of  their  birth,  and  when  we  consider  the  fact  that  eco¬ 
nomic  nitrogen  production  involves  leguminous  plants  that 
are  fit  only  for  animal  food,  we  will  begin  to  see  how  compli¬ 
cated  is  the  problem  of  developing  an  agriculture  sufficiently 
productive  to  meet  coming  requirements  without  distress. 


8 


3.  An  Agriculture  Permanent.  The  conditions  that  have 
just  been  discussed  will  not  be  temporary  and  transient: 
they  will  be  enduring,  yes,  permanent,  and  they  must  be 
met  by  a  permanent  agriculture — a  thing  the  world  has 
never  yet  suceeded  in  establishing.  No  race  has  ever  yet 
learned  to  feed  itself  except  at  the  expense  of  fertility  of 
their  own  or  of  some  other  country.  Other  races  have  come 
up  against  this  problem  and  have  gone  down  under  it. 

Where  is  Carthage  to-day?  Where  is  Egypt,  whose 
civilization  once  flourished  upon  fertility  brought  down  from 
the  highlands  of  a  great  interior?  What  of  Palestine,  that 
once  flowed  with  milk  and  honey  and  blossomed  as  the  rose, 
but  now  supports  only  a  miserable  and  straggling  population 
of  wandering  Arabs  ?  What  of  Babylon,  amid  whose  ‘  ‘heaps” 
the  jackal  snarls  where  once  kings  held  revelry  and  where 
civilization  was  born  in  the  richest  river  valley  in  all  the 
earth?  What  of  India,  where  struggling  millions  maintain 
their  racial  existence  at  the  cost  of  periodic  and  decimating 
famine  relieved  from  other  regions  that  have  not  yet  met 
the  “Great  Issue”?  What  of  China?  With  a  population  of 
four  hundred  to  the  square  mile,  it  must  presently  either 
move,  adopt  new  methods,  or  starve.  It  is  pointed  out  as  a 
people  who  have  solved  in  some  uncanny  way  the  problem 
of  a  permanent  agriculture  and  a  permanent  food  supply, 
yet  good  authority  says  that  on  the  highlands  are  regions 
once  peopled  and  now  abandoned,  where  for  stretches  of  ten 
miles  no  man  lives. 

What  of  England?  She  is  a  new  country,  yet  she  long 
ago  faced  failing  fertility  and  built  fleets  of  ships  to  carry 
guano  from  the  South  Sea  Islands,  exhausting  within  the 
recollection  of  men  sitting  here,  those  natural  beds  which 
the  seabirds  have  been  ages  in  producing.  Not  only  that, 
she  has  brought  mummies  from  Egypt  to  fertilize  English 
soil  that  the  Englishman  might  have  his  beef,  though 
already  bread  riots  wage  from  time  to  time  in  London.  So 
narrow  is  the  margin  on  which  English  agriculture  is  main¬ 
tained  that  good  judges  say  that  the  law  of  primogeniture 


9 


is  the  only  fact  that  makes  beef  production  still  possible  in 
England. 

Our  Federal  Government  announces  the  newly  discov¬ 
ered  theory  that  lands  do  not  wear  out,  but  the  fact  remains 
that  large  sections  of  Old  Virginia  are  so  worn  as  to  be 
abandoned  and  families  that  once  entertained  presidents  and 
foreign  diplomats,  now  that  the  wheat  yield  has  dropped  to 
ten  or  twenty  per  cent  of  its  former  magnitude,  eke  out  the 
income  by  keeping  summer  boarders. 

Every  intelligent  man  knows  that  the  old  cotton  and  to¬ 
bacco  lands  of  the  South  are  badly  worn  and  have  lost  for¬ 
ever  their  power  of  spontaneous  production.  That  great 
grain- growing  region  in  southern  Illinois,  known  locally  as 
“Egypt,”  covers  an  area  large  enough  to  make  ten  such 
states  as  Rhode  Island,  much  of  it  was  exhausted,  so  far  as 
profitable  agriculture  is  concerned,  by  two  generations  of 
grain  farming,  until  some  of  the  land  became  in  local  par¬ 
lance  “too  poor  to  raise  a  disturbance.”  It  is  fortunately 
being  rapidly  restored  by  methods  devised  by  the  Experi¬ 
ment  Station  but  the  saddest  fact  is  that  the  effects  of  soil 
impoverishment  had  in  some  cases  gone  so  far  as  to  affect 
the  people,  and  they  were  unable  to  raise  even  the  small 
initial  cost  of  restoration,  in  which  case,  of  course,  the  prob¬ 
lem  must  go  over  to  men  of  capital  who  had  sojourned  on 
more  fortunate  lands. 

Not  only  does  all  this  have  a  bearing  upon  the  problem 
of  a  permanent  agriculture,  but  added  to  this  is  the  fact  that 
our  “boundless  prairies”  with  their  “inexhaustible  fertility” 
are  found  upon  examination  to  be  surprisingly  short  in  phos¬ 
phorus. 

If  we  lack  nitrogen,  we  know  now  howto  get  it  from  the 
inexhaustible  supplies  of  the  air  by  the  use  of  leguminous 
crops.  If  we  lack  potassium,  the  natural  deposits  are  ap¬ 
parently  unlimited,  but  when  we  lack  phosphorus  we  are  in 
need  of  a  commodity  absolutely  essential  to  the  production 
of  food  and  one  which  exists  in  usable  form  in  but  exceed¬ 
ingly  limited  areas  on  the  earth. 


10 


Considering  all  this, — considering,  too,  the  fact  that  at 
the  present  rate  of  consumption  all  the  American  deposits 
of  high  grade  phosphate  rock  will  be  exhausted  before  the 
end  of  the  present  century,  and  considering  our  own  over¬ 
whelming  increased  need  for  food  in  the  very  near  future, 
I  am  constrained  to  say  that  in  the  interest  of  self- protection 
and  the  founding  of  a  permanent  system  of  American  agri¬ 
culture,  the  annual  exportation  of  a  million  tons  of  phos¬ 
phate  rock  to  Germany  ought  to  be  stopped,  by  constitutional 
amendment  if  necessary. 

No  man  can  study  for  a  moment  the  entirely  new  con¬ 
ditions  and  problems  that  will  confront  our  people  in  the 
immediate  future  without  realizing  that  the  establishment 
of  agricultural  colleges  and  experiment  stations  was  the 
largest  act  of  foresighted  wisdom  in  recorded  history,  nor 
can  he  fail  to  realize  that  their  adequate  maintenance  and  fost¬ 
ering  support  is  not  only  the  first  duty  but  one  of  the  high¬ 
est  public  privileges  of  the  commonwealth  of  our  day  and 
time. 

There  is  to  be,  in  the  very  near  future,  a  struggle  for 
land  and  the  food  it  will  produce,  such  as  the  world  has 
never  yet  beheld.  He  who  knows  where  and  how  to  look 
can  see  it  coming.  The  African  activity  among  western 
European  nations  is  a  part  of  it.  It  is  always  cheaper  to 
move  than  to  stay  when  over-population  and  failing  fertility 
threaten  a  shortage  of  food — providing  there  is  any  place  to 
move  into;  that  is,  providing  we  can  dispossess  the  other 
party  and  his  land  is  worth  the  contest. 

However  that  may  be  as  an  abstract  proposition,  for  us 
there  is  no  more  moving.  For  us  there  are  no  more  “new 
worlds”.  For  us  there  is  little  more  “Out  West.”  Our  for¬ 
tune  and  our  future,  whatever  they  may  be,  are  staked  down 
on  the  American  Continent.  Literally  “here  we  rest”  and 
whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  must  devise  and  establish  a 
permanent  agriculture  here  or  go  down  in  the  attempt. 

Our  descendants  will  certainly  be  as  cultured  as  we: 
they  ought  to  be  more  so.  Their  needs  surely  will  not  be 


t 


11 


fewer  or  of  a  more  modest  character.  Their  numbers  will  be 
vastly  greater  and  unless  we,  not  they ,  can  succeed  in  found¬ 
ing  a  permanent  agriculture,  the  race  will  degenerate  and 
end  where  it  commenced,  in  poverty  and  barbarism. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  restorative  and  perma¬ 
nent  systems  must  be  established  before  the  people  are  in  dis¬ 
tress  for  the  necessities  of  life.  It  is  we  who  must  discover 
and  establish  this  permanent  system.  There  is  no  time  to 
be  lost,  for  we  do  not  yet  know  how  to  do  it  and  a  stupendous 
population  is  just  upon  us.  It  is  none  to  soon  to  attack 
with  all  the  scientific  vigor  of  all  the  Experiment  Stations  of 
all  the  States  this  perfectly  stupendous  problem  which  will 
shortly  bear  harder  upon  us  than  upon  any  contemporaneous 
race  in  the  world  except  the  Hindus  and  the  Chinese  who 
have  almost  certainly  delayed  too  long  and  lost  their  chance. 
European  nations  will  be  occupied  for  generations  yet  in  ex¬ 
planting  Africa  and  perhaps  South  America  and  we  before 
any  other  modern  nation  must  face  the  issue  of  a  permanent 
agriculture . 

We  have  no  right  to  dodge  this  issue  now  while  we  are 
few  and  young  and  wealthy.  It  is  our  own  descendants 
whose  lives  and  happiness  we  literally  hold  in  the  hollow  of 
our  hands  and  he  who  shirks  that  responsibility  is  guilty  of 
a  crime  against  his  race  beside  which  ordinary  treason  is  tri¬ 
vial,  and  when  we  are  called,  as  we  are,  to  the  task  of  estab¬ 
lishing  if  we  can  a  permanent  agriculture,  it  is  a  call  of  the 
race  for  a  chance  to  live  and  work  out  its  destiny. 

So  much  for  what  may  be  called  the  business  side  of 
farming — an  agriculture  that  is  reasonably  profitable,  highly 
productive,  and  certainly  permanent.  What  now  on  the 
human  side?  What  is  the  development  of  the  farmer  as  a 
man  to  match  the  development  of  his  business  as  an  occupa¬ 
tion?  And  so  I  come  to  the  next  count  in  our  series  of 
development. 

4.  The  Country  Comfortable.  Agriculture  is  not  only  a 
business;  it  is  a  mode  of  life  as  well,  and  if  it  is  to  be  suc¬ 
cessful  in  the  latter  particular  it  must  in  the  end  afford  its 


12 


devotees  the  same  comforts  of  life  as  are  obtainable  in  other 
occupations.  This  has  not  hitherto  been  possible,  but  its 
early  realization  is  becoming  every  day  more  promising  and 
if  the  colleges  and  stations  perform  their  whole  duty  in  this 
direction  and  if  they  are  supported  by  the  people,  as  they 
ought  to  be  supported,  then  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  dis¬ 
tinctive  developments  of  our  agriculture  will  be  in  creature 
comforts  on  the  farm. 

This  development  will  largely  take  the  special  form  of 
modern  conveniences  including  labor-saving  equipments  in 
the  farmhouse.  The  farmer  has  provided  himself  with  all 
sorts  of  machinery  and  ingenious  mechanical  devices  not 
only  to  cheapen  production  but  to  make  labor  easier  for  him¬ 
self,  his  hired  help  and  even  his  animals.  In  the  meantime 
his  wife  gets  on  with  few  improvements  and  with  no  real 
conveniences,  living  and  scraping  along  as  best  she  can 
against  the  day  when  the  family  shall  build  its  home  in  town 
and  “have  the  conveniences”.  By  modern  conveniences  are 
generally  meant  bath  room  and  toilet  facilities,  a  lighting 
system  and  running  water  inside  the  house.  That  is  about 
all  but  it  would  take  a  book  to  recite  what  has  been  sacri¬ 
ficed  in  going  to  town  to  get  these  things. 

The  farmer  has  abandoned  his  business.  He  has  broken 
up  his  children’s  home.  He  has  exposed  his  little  ones  to  the 
unbridled  dangers  of  the  small  town.  He  has  set  before  them 
the  example  of  idleness.  He  has  turned  his  back  upon  the 
farm  that  has  made  his  wealth  and  stripped  the  land  of  its 
fertility  to  build  in  the  town  the  home  to  which  the  farm  was 
entitled.  He  has  stripped  the  country  of  its  earnings  to 
build  up  the  city  and  add  to  its  numbers  a  wholly  useless 
and  undesirable  population.  So  common  has  this  thing  be¬ 
come  as  to  excite  public  alarm  and  no  one  topic  rings  a  more 
significant  note  through  the  findings  of  the  Country  Life 
Commission  than  the  abandonment  of  the  farm  at  the  stage 
of  house  building. 

The  uselessness  of  all  this  under  even  present  condi¬ 
tions  was,  I  think,  first  called  to  public  attention  in  an  ad- 


13 


dress  by  Mrs.  Davenport  at  the  Illinois  Farmers’  Institute 
at  Peoria  in  February  of  last  year.  She  had  had  an  exten¬ 
sive  experience  on  the  farm  and  had  lived  a  good  number  of 
years  in  town.  With  a  natural  mechanical  instinct  and  some 
experience  in  building,  she  saw  how  thoroughly  the  conven¬ 
iences  and  the  labor  of  the  house  had  been  overlooked,  rela¬ 
tively  speaking,  by  both  inventor  and  designer  except  where 
conditions  of  life,  as  in  the  city,  compelled  some  decent  at¬ 
tention  to  sanitary  measures,  evolving  the  bath  room,  the 
toilet  and  the  slop  sink.  She  saw  how  completely  the  labor 
of  the  house  had  been  left  to  servants  in  the  homes  of  the 
wealthy  or  endured  by  the  wife  unable  to  afford  a  servant, 
neither  of  which  conditions  developed  conveniences  for  per¬ 
forming  the  household  labor.  This  comparative  poverty  in 
house  equipment  is  also  partly  due  to  the  lack  of  attention 
on  the  part  of  the  inventors  and  activity  of  manufactures, 
all  of  which  is  traceable  to  another  initial  abomination — that 
ancient  and  dishonorable  custom  by  which  the  husband  car¬ 
ries  the  pocketbook  and  so  often  opens  it  only  upon  humil¬ 
iating  supplication  for  a  share  of  what  the  wife  on  the  farm 
has  fairly  earned. 

Mrs.  Davenport  knew  that  conditions  had  commenced 
to  mend  themselves  in  certain  particulars  and  were  capable 
of  still  further  improvement.  Accordingly  she  set  out  to 
learn  how  far  and  to  what  extent  the  farm  house  can  now  be 
equipped  not  only  with  the  so-called  modern  conveniences, 
but  with  still  further  devices  for  saving  labor.  The  results 
of  her  study  were  given  in  the  address  already  referred  to 
and  may  be  briefly  summarized  as  follows: 

The  enterprise  of  the  best  farmers  in  equipping  the  farm 
with  machinery  has  already  reached  the  stage  of  the  small 
gasolene  engine  for  running  the  machinery  of  the  barns  and 
especially  for  pumping  water,  generally  into  small  or  elevat¬ 
ed  tanks  subject  to  freezing,  an  evolution  from  the  old  and 
unreliable  wind  mill. 

Beginning  at  this  point  with  the  gasolene  engine  which 
stands  as  a  kind  of  connecting  link  between  the  machinery 


14 


of  the  farm  and  that  of  the  house,  it  appears  that  this  little 
engine,  first  of  all,  can  pump  water,  both  hard  and  soft,  in¬ 
to  the  Kewanee  automatic  system  and  secure  a  pressure  of 
70  pounds  per  square  inch  in  air  tight  tanks  standing  in  the 
basement  or  buried  in  the  ground  beyond  the  reach  of  frost. 
This  is  as  good  as  the  best  city  pressure  and  is  abundant  to 
throw  water  over  any  of  the  buildings,  carry  it  into  both 
house  and  barn  and  nearby  fields  and  put  both  hard  and  soft 
water,  hot  and  cold,  on  all  the  floors  of  the  house.  It  will 
also  run  a  water  motor — cost,  six  dollars, — sufficiently  power¬ 
ful  to  operate  the  washing  machine  and  do  the  hardest  part 
of  the  hardest  job  about  any  home — all  for  six  dollars  under 
pressure.  This  same  engine  can  run  a  gasolene  heated  man¬ 
gle  with  a  capacity  of  a  napkin  a  minute  or  a  table  cloth  every 
six  minutes.  It  may  also  operate  a  storage  battery  electric 
light  plant.  Not  only  that,  it  can  furnish  the  power  for  the 
churn  and  other  small  machinery,  and  last  of  all,  it  can 
operate  a  vacuum  cleaner  system  whose  installation  in  the 
private  house  is  now  entirely  feasible. 

Besides  this,  the  soil  absorption  system  will  care  for  the 
waste  from  bathroom,  laundry  and  slop  sink  as  completely 
and  as  satisfactorily  as  the  best  city  sewer.  If  economy  is 
imperative,  acetylene  or  gasolene  may  be  substituted  for  the 
electric  lights,  or  if  electricity  is  used,  the  small  machinery 
may  be  operated  by  electric  motors. 

This  is  actually  being  done  on  the  farm  now  in  Illinois, 
and  I  doubt  not  elsewhere.  A  few  months  ago  our  Engineer¬ 
ing  Experiment  Station  issued  a  bulletin  on  electric  light¬ 
ing  in  private  houses.  You  will  be  interested  to  know  that 
we  have  had  more  calls  for  this  material,  which  was  reprint¬ 
ed  as  a  circular  by  the  Agricultural  Experiment  Station, 
than  for  anything  ever  issued  by  the  Station,  showing  most 
significantly  the  direction  of  the  drift  of  the  public  mind. 

Here  we  have  water  pressure,  bath  and  toilet  room,  a 
lighting  plant,  power  laundry  machinery,  vacuum  cleaner, 
all  that  any  city  home  can  secure  in  the  way  of  modern  con¬ 
veniences  and  more  than  can  be  had  there,  except  with  dif- 


15 


ficulty,  for  city  residences  commonly  do  not  possess  a  source 
of  power, — all  this,  as  well  as  in  the  city  and  better. 

I  was  amazed,  optimist  though  I  am,  at  the  results  of 
this  investigation  into  the  possibilities  of  the  independent 
plant,  at  what  can  be  done,  not  in  the  future,  but  now  in  the 
equipment  of  the  farm  home  with  the  conveniencies  of  human 
life.  ^ 

But,  you  will  say,  think  of  the  expense!  Yes,  it  is  costly, 
all  good  things  are  costly.  Farm  machinery  is  costly,  es¬ 
pecially  a  reaper  that  is  seldom  operated  ten  days  out  of  the 
year  and  lasts  on  the  average  but  three  years.  It  is  all 
costly,  but  remember  that  we  are  talking  about  a  class  of 
people  who  ride  always  in  covered  carriages,  drive  good 
horses  and  are  able  to  go  to  town  to  live. 

Now  an  entire  bath  room  outfit  can  be  bought  and  installed 
for  the  price  of  a  single  covered  buggy  and  will  outlast  the 
buggy  half  a  dozen  times  over.  The  vacuum  cleaner,  that 
acme  of  comfort  and  luxury,  will  cost  the  price  of  a  good  horse 
or  a  medium  team.  Yes,  it  is  costly.  The  whole  outfit  will  cost 
a  thousand  dollars,  perhaps  twelve  or  fifteen  hundred  with 
the  engine,  depending  upon  the  size  and  grade  of  the  outfit. 

Yes,  it  will  cost  just  about  ivhat  a  city  building  lot  will 
cost  in  any  town  worth  living  in  and  not  on  a  principal  street 
either.  In  other  words,  the  moment  the  farmer  moves  to 
town  to  secure  “modern  conveniences”,  he  planks  down  at 
the  outset  for  a  building  site  as  much  money  as  it  would  take 
to  provide  all  these  things  and  more  on  the  farm  he  has  left 
behind.  Then,  in  addition,  he  will  need  to  draw  generous 
quarterly  checks  for  water  rates,  gas  bills,  electric  lights  and 
invest  from  two  to  three  thousand  additional  for  income  to 
meet  the  extra  cost  of  taxation. 

Many  of  the  choicest  physical  blessings  are  inherent  in 
country  life,  such  as  good  air,  plenty  of  room,  open  sunshine, 
and  comparative  freedom  from  dangerously  infectious  dis¬ 
eases.  Others  are  being  rapidly  added,  such  as  the  tele¬ 
phone,  which  is  both  better  and  cheaper  than  in  the  city; 
the  rural  delivery  ot  mail  by  which  the  farms  are  better 


16 


served  than  are  most  towns,  and  the  consolidated  secondary 
school  by  which  the  farmers’  children  will  soon  receive  liter¬ 
ally  from  the  father’s  roof  the  best  education  in  the  world. 

When,  now,  we  have  learned  to  build  comfortable  homes 
for  ourselves  and  our  children,  then  will  the  country  be  of  all 
places  for  living  the  most  delightful  and  the  most  desirable 
from  the  greatest  variety  of  standpoints. 

5.  The  Country  Beautiful.  Time  and  space  are  all  too 
short  for  saying  all  that  ought  to  be  said  about  the  human 
side  of  agricultural  development,  but  I  shall  steal  a  word  and 
a  moment  to  enter  a  plea  for  the  country  beautiful;  some¬ 
thing  to  please  the  eye  and  uplift  the  soul;  something  be¬ 
yond  the  body;  something  that  shall  foreshadow  here  what 
Heaven  may  be  hereafter. 

First  of  all,  I  plead  for  the  early  evolution  of  a  suitable 
country  architecture:  for  house  and  barn  exteriors  that  shall 
blend  with  the  natural  features  of  their  surroundings.  We 
build  a  barn  on  the  ugliest  lines  that  human  ingenuity  can 
devise,  often  go  the  limits  by  painting  it  red  and  then  won¬ 
der  why  it  is  so  often  struck  by  lightning. 

Let  the  country  house  be  built  on  good  lines  within  and 
without.  Let  it  be  generously  and  hospitably  big,  with  broad 
low  roof  and  wide  projection.  Let  it  be  surrounded  by  por¬ 
ches  wide  and  deep,  and  inside,  let  the  rooms  be  generous 
and  the  stairways  broad.  Let  the  colors  everywhere  be 
strong  but  soft,  and  outside  let  it  blend  into  its  setting  of 
lawn  and  trees  as  if  this  home  had  been  builded  in  a  spot 
which  Nature  had  made  expressly  for  the  place  where  a 
family  might  live  and  where  children  might  be  born  and  grow 
up  and  go  out  into  the  world  to  engage  in  and  succeed  in 
many  things,  but  never  to  forget  the  childhood  home  of 
blessed  memory. 

All  this  is  a  sentimental  side  of  our  business,  I  know, 
but  after  all,  sentiment  is  the  strongest  thing  in  the  world, 
and  you  and  I  may  not  know  the  racial  asset  of  a  dozen  gen¬ 
eration^  born  and  reared  in  such  homes  as  may  now  be  estab¬ 
lished  on  the  farm. 


17 


It  is  traditional  to  assume  a  plain,  hard  life,  destitute  of 
comforts  for  the  family  on  the  farm.  In  this  we  do  err. 
Nothing  is  farther  from  the  essential.  We  cannot  build  and 
maintain  a  permanent  agriculture  on  that  proposition.  In 
such  an  assumption  we  confuse  the  necessary  hardships  of 
the  pioneer  with  the  possibilities  of  the  open  country. 

Farming  and  pioneering  started  off  together  and  the  life 
of  the  pioneer  farmer  was  hard,  not  because  he  was  a  farmer 
but  because  he  was  a  pioneer.  Nature  was  unsubdued- 
Men  and  women  were  poor,  and  life  was  hard  at  the  best 
when  necessities  were  counted  luxuries.  But  those  days  are 
over  on  real  agricultural  lands,  and  farming  is  coming  in¬ 
to  its  own.  There  are  non- agricultural  lands  where  country 
life  will  continue  hard,  but  this  is  not  American  agriculture. 
These  are  not  farmers.  Look  for  American  agriculture  on 
agricultural  lands  and  you  will  find  it  in  any  state  of  the 
Union.  Here  pioneering  and  farming  have  parted  company 
forever.  Farming  will  go  its  way  on  its  own  plan  and  if  you 
look  for  it  here,  you  will  find  it  a  thousand  years  from  now. 
I  wonder  what  it  will  be  like?  The  people  then  will  be  our 
descendants;  yours  and  mine.  I  wonder  what  they  will  think 
of  us,  and  how  they  will  record  history  between  now  and 
then.  I  should  like  to  be  well  thought  of  by  them,  for  they 
ought  to  be  a  very  superior  people,  and  they  will  be  if  we 
all  be  wise,  for  what  they  are  then  will  depend  not  a  little 
upon  what  we  do  now. 

Let  us  at  once  set  about  building  country  homes  that  shall 
last  for  generations.  Let  us  give  them  plenty  of  room,  with 
broad  lawns  and  much  grass.  Let  there  be  some  flowers 
and  shrubbery  to  add  a  touch  of  brightness  but  above  all, 
let  there  be  trees ,  trees ,  long-lived  trees ,  that  will  tell  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  the  future  that  their  grandfathers,  who  are  we,  took 
thought  for  them.  Let  the  whole  picture  have  its  setting  in 
a  natural  frame  of  forests  and  of  hills,  of  fields  where  cattle 
be,  of  meadows  and  lakes  and  running  water.  So  shall  we 
build  and  in  this  way  only  leave  our  best  thoughts  behind. 
So  will  the  farm  at  last  come  into  its  own. 


18 


6.  The  Country  Educated.  And  now  I  come  to  the  last, 
which  is  also  the  greatest  of  the  separate  features  of  agricul¬ 
tural  development.  I  refer  to  the  education  and  the  culture 
of  the  men  and  women  who  shall  live  upon  the  land  and  till 
our  soil — it  is  ours  and  not  theirs — who  shall  think  our 
thoughts  as  we  cannot  think  them  amid  the  stress  and  strain 
and  struggle  of  the  city;  who  shall  keep  the  country  as  the 
great  breeding  ground  where  children  may  grow  up  into  men 
and  women  without  that  prematurity  and  that  dangerous 
sophistication  that  mark  so  many  of  the  city  born  and  bred. 

This  matter  involves  the  whole  philosophy  of  agricul¬ 
tural  education,  both  of  collegiate  and  secondary  grade;  in¬ 
deed,  it  covers  a  large  part  of  our  educational  effort,  for  it 
involves  the  education  of  half  our  population,  and  on  this 
matter,  I  beg  to  speak  briefly  but  to  the  point. 

Agricultural  education  is  but  a  feature,  albeit  a  large 
and  important  one,  but  none  the  less  it  is  a  feature  of  our 
system  of  universal  education,  and  the  spirit  and  purpose  of 
our  system  of  universal  education,  as  I  understand  it,  is  this: 
to  so  educate  all  men  as  bo  make  them  first  of  all  self- 
supporting  and  useful  contributors  to  some  feature — no  mat¬ 
ter  what — of  the  public  good,  and  second,  to  encourage  and 
develop  in  their  several  personalities  the  best  that  is  in 
them  as  human  beings  and  members  of  a  rapidly  advancing 
society  whose  capabilities,  if  not  unlimited,  are  as  yet  un¬ 
known. 

Universal  education  is  an  attempt  to  make  the  most  not 
only  of  the  exceptional  man  but  of  all  normal  men,  the 
masses  of  whom  really  represent  the  race  and  limit  its 
achievements  and  advance.  As  half  the  people  live  by 
farming,  the  problem  of  agricultural  education  shoulders 
one-half  the  problem  of  universal  education,  at  least  so  far 
as  numbers  go:  moreover,  it  is  the  half  that  will  have  more 
than  its  share  to  do  in  fixing  the  future  of  all  classes.  How 
now  shall  agricultural  education  be  conducted  so  as  to  meet 
these  broad  requirements  felt  alike  by  farmers  and  all  other 
members  of  our  social  body? 


19 


First  of  all,  agricultural  education  must  be  so  conducted 
as  to  make  the  farmers  efficient  in  a  business  way.  It  has 
taken  more  than  a  generation  to  begin  to  find  all  that  is  in¬ 
volved  in  this  feature  only  of  education  for  the  business  of 
farming,  and  few  men  yet  realize  that,  of  all  forms  of  educa¬ 
tion,  that  in  technical  agriculture  is  the  most  costly  if  it  is 
made  good  enough  to  be  really  worth  while.  The  young 
man  does  not  want  to  study  about  cattle:  he  needs  to  study 
cattle  themselves,  a  distinction  not  yet  observed,  I  am  sorry 
to  say,  in  some  of  our  institutions  of  learning. 

The  young  man  who  is  fitting  himself  for  farming  wants 
not  a  mass  of  information  about  present  day  agricultural 
practice:  that  will  pass  and  it  ought  to  pass.  It  is  compara¬ 
tively  easy  to  teach  but  it  will  be  out  of  date  and  gone  be¬ 
fore  it  can  serve  a  man  now  in  school,  as  a  definite  guide  to 
procedure.  Furthermore  he  wants  this  not  in  the  university 
only,  accessible  merely  to  those  who  may  go  to  college  but 
he  wants  it  and  must  have  it  in  every  high  school  that  it  may 
be  accessible  from  the  home.  He  wants  it  not  in  a  few  con¬ 
gressional  district  schools  separated  from  everything  else 
educational,  but  he  wants  it  wherever  men  from  the  country 
seek  an  education  and  he  wants  it  associated  with  all  the 
other  subjects  and  where  other  men  are  educated. 

What  he  wants  from  a  business  standpoint  is  instruction 
in  the  principles  involved  in  agriculture  so  far  as  they  are 
known  and  in  methods  of  investigation  after  the  unknown, 
that  he  may  keep  himself  intelligent  as  this  great  business 
of  agricultural  development  proceeds  before  his  eyes  day  by 
day.  All  this  is  extremely  difficult  for  both  teacher  and 
student,  and  it  involves  an  expense  for  skilled  men,  for 
equipment  and  for  research,  such  as  is  not  yet  appreciated 
by  anybody,  much  less  by  public  men. 

Teachers  and  investigators  who  have  skill  in  this  line 
are  few  and  their  services  are  extremely  valuable,  so  valua¬ 
ble  that  the  state  which  fills  its  quota  with  the  best  must 
stand  ready  to  pay  teaching  salaries  such  as  have  never  yet 
been  paid.  They  must  also  devote  money  to  equipment  and 


20 


facilities  for  research  to  an  extent  which  makes  all  that  has 
yet  been  done  look  microscopic  and  miserable — all  this  must 
be  done  if  this  development  of  agriculture  is  to  proceed 
along  all  these  lines  as  fast  and  as  surely  as  it  ought  to  pro¬ 
ceed. 

So  much  for  the  technical  side:  for  what  a  man  must 
know  if  he  is  to  occupy  the  soil  of  the  public  domain  to  the 
best  advantage  to  himself  and  to  the  state.  Because  of  what 
I  am  about  to  say  and  lest  I  then  be  misunderstood,  let  me 
remark  before  passing,  that  I  am  a  stickler  for  technical 
education  both  collegiate  and  secondary  and  for  agricultural 
research  of  the  most  strictly  technical  character  beyond  any¬ 
thing  that  any  man  has  ever  yet  dared  to  propose. 

But  that  is  not  all.  There  remains  a  human  side  to 
agriculture.  The  farmer  is  not  only  a  tiller  of  the  soil;  he 
is  a  man  and  a  member  of  our  permanent  society;  moreover, 
he  is  a  voting  member  of  the  body  politic.  This  is  only 
another  way  of  saying  that  as  a  man  he  possesses  inherent 
privileges  for  himself  and  owes  substantial  duties  to  the 
community  quite  outside  and  beyond  the  limits  of  his  voca¬ 
tion  and  his  education  therefore. 

So  I  enter  a  protest  against  that  philosophy  of  education 
and  that  system  of  schools  which  would  by  design  or  by 
necessity  confine  the  education  of  a  farmer  or  of  any  other 
man,  industrial  or  non-industrial,  to  the  limits  of  his  voca- 
tionl  and  business  needs,  and  I  protest  against  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  separate  agricultural  schools  in  this  country  for  the 
same  reasons  that  I  protest  against  the  exclusion  of  the  farm¬ 
er  from  good  society  or  any  other  common  interest  of  Amer¬ 
ican  development. 

Every  man  is  or  ought  to  be  bigger  than  his  business. 
He  does  not  and  should  not  be  so  educated  as  to  live  for  his 
business,  he  is  in  business  that  he  may  live,  and  the  large 
question-  the  largest  of  all  questions  before  any  man — is,  what 
shall  he  do  with  himself?  what  shall  he  do  with  the  result  of 
his  earnings?  how  shall  he  justify  his  existence?  He  has  a 
right  to  be  so  educated  as  to  answer  these  questions,  which 


21 


are  final;  to  be  in  business  for  something  other  than  to  con¬ 
duct  business  or  while  away  the  time. 

And  so  a  good  part  of  the  education  of  the  farmer  as  of 
other  men  is,  or  should  be,  non- vocational,  and  of  such  charac¬ 
ter  as  shall  best  suit  his  individual  tastes  and  surroundings. 
It  will  be  history  and  economics  for  one,  philosophy  for  an¬ 
other,  language  and  the  classics  for  a  third,  music,  painting  or 
some  other  form  of  art  for  others — I  care  not  what  it  is,  only 
so  that  it  is  something  that  develops  human  faculties  outside 
vocational  needs,  and  only  so  it  serves  to  broaden  rather 
than  to  narrow  which  is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  valu¬ 
able  technical  training. 

I  therefore  enter  a  plea  and  a  demand  for  the  broadest 
possible  views  regarding  agricultural  education.  The  farm¬ 
er  as  a  man  is  no  different  than  other  men  unless  we  make 
him  so  by  our  education,  and  if  we  do  the  time  will  come 
when  other  men  of  other  classes  will  share  with  him  the  con¬ 
sequences  of  a  short-sighted  and  inadequate  system  of  educa¬ 
tion  for  industrial  purposes. 

A  scheme  for  the  education  of  farmers  in  separate  schools 
is  being  industriously  advocated  these  days  by  a  class  of 
educators  who  seem  to  feel  that  a  little  education,  and  that  al¬ 
most  exclusively  technical,  is  sufficient  for  farming  pur¬ 
poses,  and  that  the  European  peasant  school  is  a  model. 
The  advocates  of  this  sort  of  school  overlook  certain  impor¬ 
tant  features  of  agricultural  education  and  of  the  philosophy 
of  education  in  general:  they  overlook  the  fact  that  the  pros¬ 
pective  farmer  should  be  educated  as  a  man  as  well  as  a 
farmer;  in  other  words,  that  the  farmer’s,  like  every  man’s 
education,  should  include  both  the  technical  and  the  non¬ 
technical,  both  the  vocational  and  the  non- vocational. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  we  cannot  safely  educate 
separate  professions  in  separate  schools,  for  to  do  so  is  to 
build  up  distinct  classes,  each  educated  for  and  prejudiced  in 
its  own  affairs  and  against  the  world. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  there  is  a  great  body  of 
knowledge  that  can  form  the  background  and  the  backbone 


22 


of  the  education  of  all  men  for  all  pursuits,  and  that  this  is 
our  chief est  reliance  for  holding  our  people  together  as  one 
people. 

They  overlook  the  highly  educational  influence  of  mere 
association  with  other  men  as  secured  in  universities  which 
fit  for  all  the  affairs  of  life. 

They  overlook  the  capacity  of  the  American  secondary 
school  to  still  further  broaden  its  curriculum  and  widen  its 
educational  influence.  This  thoroughly  unique  American 
institution  is  abundantly  able  to  reflect  in  its  atmosphere  and 
its  class  rooms  the  same  cosmopolitan  influence  that  consti¬ 
tutes  the  chief  distinction  of  American  universities. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  our  high  schools  are  not 
“city  schools”  wholly  given  over  to  the  affairs  of  the  city. 
They  are  schools  of  the  people  in  the  best  and  highest  sense 
of  the  term,  willing  and  able  to  reflect  all  the  major  interests 
of  the  people  of  their  respective  communities,  and  to  denom¬ 
inate  as  a  “city  school”1  every  school  in  a  village  of  2,000,  and 
therefore,  as  a  school  where  agriculture  presumably  should 
not  be  taught,  is  to  say  the  least  un-American. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  establish  separate  agri¬ 
cultural  schools  of  an  inferior  grade  for  country  people 
would  fail  to  serve  with  the  education  best  suited  to  their 
need  that  large  element  of  the  country-born  that  is  not 
adapted  to  farm  life. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  the  European  system  of  edu¬ 
cation  was  evolved  after  distinct  social  classes  had  been  es¬ 
tablished  by  generations  of  political  and  economic  influences, 
whose  repetition  in  America  it  was  the  special  purpose  of  our 
Puritan  forefathers  to  prevent. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  in  America  the  country  peo- 

1  See  the  so-called  Davis  Bill  now  before  Congress,  which  bill  aims  to  establish  a 
separate  system  of  agricultural  schools,  limited  in  number,  rather  than  that  agriculture 
should  be  taught  in  connection  with  other  subjects  in  all  high  schools  wherever  a 
country  constituency  exists.  This  proposed  legislation  is  not  only  needlessly  costly 
but  its  inevitable  consequence  is  to  widen  the  breach  between  different  classes  and  ulti¬ 
mately  to  stratify  society  and  to  peasantize  the  American  farmer.  All  this  should  not 
be  risked  for  a  bit  of  federal  aid  which  in  its  last  analysis  we  pay  ourselves.  See  Peoria 
address,  pp.  17-25. 


23 


pie  have  not  yet  been  peasantized,  but  that;  so  far  we  are  a 
homogeneous  people  except  for  immigration,  which  is  a  city 
and  not  a  country  problem. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  educate  farmers  by  them¬ 
selves  in  separate  schools  almost  purely  technical  and  dis¬ 
tinctly  inferior  both  in  breadth  and  intensity  to  the  high 
schools  in  which  other  classes  are  educated— that  to  do 
this  thing  is  to  peasantize  the  farmers  more  rapidly  and 
more  completely  than  they  were  ever  peasantized  in  Europe 
or  than  would  be  possible  by  any  other  method  that  could  be 
devised  by  the  ingenuity  of  man. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  to  peasantize  the  schools 
wherein  farmers  may  be  educated  is  to  peasantize  the  farm¬ 
ers  themselves,  the  first  effect  of  which  is  to  put  them  out  of 
sympathy  with  other  classes,  and  the  other  effect  will  be  to 
limit  their  very  ability  as  occupants  and  managers  of  the 
land,  and  their  economic  efficiency  as  farmers,  after  which 
will  be  due  and  payable  to  men  of  all  interests  and  all  classes 
the  social  and  political  consequences  of  this  proposed  educa¬ 
tional  sin. 

They  overlook  the  fact  that  this  sort  of  educational  phil¬ 
osophy,  extended  to  its  conclusion,  would  demand  that  all 
men  be  educated  exclusively  to  vocational  ends,  each  in  their 
separate  schools,  out  of  touch  and  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
rights  and  ideals  and  ambitions  of  other  classes,  the  only 
final  consequence  of  which  is  social  chaos  and  political  an¬ 
archy,  because  if  our  people  are  once  broken  up  into  classes 
according  to  occupation,  they  can  never  again  be  amalgamated. 

They  overlook  what  has  been  achieved  in  universities 
wherein  men  of  all  conceivable  purposes  are  educated  both 
separately  and  together  in  a  common  atmosphere  of  demo¬ 
cratic  wholesomeness. 

This  matter  of  the  education  of  many  men  for  many  oc¬ 
cupations  but  for  one  citizenship  has  settled  itself  and  set¬ 
tled  itself  right  on  college  levels  in  very  many  of  our  states. 
I  congratulate  you  that  in  your  state  all  these  educational 
purposes  and  achievements  are  brought  together  in  a  single 


24 


institution.  If  you  will  carry  the  same  ideal  into  your  sec¬ 
ondary  schools,  you  will  have  a  people  with  a  common  stock 
of  education  and  a  common  bond  of  sympathy,  because  the 
different  classes,  having  been  educated  together,  will  under¬ 
stand  each  other. 

I  would  have  Americans  so  educated  that  in  a  company 
you  cannot  tell  by  the  dress,  the  language  or  the  manner  of 
a  man  what  his  occupation  is  Your  educational  policy  will 
achieve  all  this,  and  by  it  you  may  handle  this  with  no  detri¬ 
ment  to  business  efficiency,  but  in  the  end,  to  its  very  great 
advantage  in  every  way. 

Agricultural  Development  a  Public  Investment. 

This  development  of  American  agriculture,  until  it  shall 
be  profitable,  productive  and  permanent  and  until  the  coun¬ 
try  shall  be  both  comfortable  and  beautiful,  and  the  people 
educated — all  this  will  cost  money,  stupendous  amounts  of  it, 
as  we  are  accustomed  to  measure  values  in  private  life,  for 
it  means  a  reorganization  and  very  largely  a  redirection  of 
the  lives,  the  purposes  and  the  achievements  of  at  least  a 
third  of  our  great  people. 

If  it  were  solely  a  matter  of  their  own  concern,  we  might 
leave  them  to  provide  for  this  development  or  let  matters 
rest  as  they  are.  But  in  the  last  analysis  the  development 
of  agriculture  is  a  -public  question.  The  farmers  are  interest¬ 
ed  in  it,  of  course,  and  for  selfish  reasons,  but  even  if  they 
were  not  interested  we  should  still  insist  for  public  reasons 
that  our  agriculture  should  be  developed  to  the  utmost.  The 
farmers  will  reap  the  first  advantages  of  such  development, 
to  be  sure,  but  they  can  realize  no  advantage  that  is  not 
shared  with  all  interests  of  all  people  everywhere. 

The  farmers  have  developed  the  handicraft  of  farming, 
or  the  art  of  agriculture,  if  you  please,  about  as  far  as  expe¬ 
rience  alone  can  take  it.  What  is  needed  now  is  the  study 
and  promulgation  of  the  scientific  principles  involved  in  ag¬ 
ricultural  practice  and  in  this  field  experience  may  correct 
and  help  to  shape  up  results,  but  it  cannot  originate.  This 


25 


is  the  great  work  of  the  Experiment  Station,  as  is  the  educa¬ 
tion  in  these  principles  the  business  of  the  College. 

These  institutions  then  stand  in  the  very  forefront  of  fur¬ 
ther  agricultural  progress  and  the  rate  of  this  progress  will 
depend  upon  the  amounts  of  money  which  the  public  is  willing 
to  put  into  the  effort,  and  the  mutual  inclination  and  ability 
of  the  University  and  the  farmers  to  go  along  together.  In 
Illinois  these  relations  are  now  of  the  closest,  and  from  now 
on  agricultural  development  is  almost  wholly  a  matter  of 
money. 

Illinois  has  led  in  the  amounts  of  money  which  she  has 
been  willing  to  devote  to  the  development  of  her  agriculture. 
New  York  has  been  a  close  second,  and  other  states  are 
coming  along.  These  amounts  and  their  gradual  growth  are 
shown  in  the  following  table  together  with  the  increase  in 
the  faculty  and  the  related  increase  in  bona  fide  agricultural 
students. 


Year 

Funds* 

Faculty 
College  & 
Station 

Students 

College 

Station 

Regist¬ 

ered 

Graduat¬ 

ing 

90r91 

5000. 

15,000. 

3 

7 

2 

91-92 

5000. 

15,000. 

3 

6 

0 

92-93 

5000. 

15,000-. 

3 

13 

2 

93-94 

5000. 

15,000. 

3 

5 

1 

94-95 

5000. 

15,000. 

3 

9 

0 

95-96 

7000. 

15,000. 

3 

14 

0 

96-97 

7000. 

15,000. 

6 

17 

2 

97-98 

7000. 

15,000. 

8 

19 

2 

98-99 

7000. 

15,000. 

9 

25 

4 

99-00 

28,000. 

15,000. 

16 

90 

2 

00-01 

28,000. 

15,000. 

17 

159 

4 

01-02 

34,000. 

69,000. 

23 

232 

4 

02-03 

34,000. 

69,000. 

27 

284 

9 

03-04 

90,000. 

100,000. 

37 

339 

10 

04-05 

90,000. 

100,000. 

37 

406 

18 

05-06 

91,000. 

110,000. 

44 

430 

24 

06-07 

91,000. 

110,000. 

50 

462 

43 

07-08 

102,000. 

126,000. 

61 

528 

38 

08-09 

104,500. 

128,000. 

63 

est.550 

est.  53 

*From  all  sources,  both  state  and  federal- 


1891 
Id  92 
IS  S3 

1894 

1895 
/896 

1897 

1898 

1899 

1900 

1901 

1908 

1903 

1904 
/90S 
/906 
1907 
/908 

1909 

1910 

1911 


27 


It  is  evident  that  so  far  as  research  is  concerned  the 
work  done  by  the  Station  will  be  limited  by  the  funds 
available.  On  the  College  side  the  attendance  is  seen  to 
be  in  direct  proportion  to  funds;  moreover  increased  attend¬ 
ance  follows  and  does  not  precede  increase  of  funds,  as  is 
graphically  shown  in  Figure  1. 

This  seems  to  be  a  worthy  record  but  the  amounts  are 
grossly  insufficient  to  meet  the  demands  that  are  now  upon 
the  State  University  and  that  are  increasing  every  day,  as 
shown  by  the  attendance  of  students  and  by  the  correspond¬ 
ence  asking  information  which  now  amounts  to  approxi¬ 
mately  fifteen  thousand  letters  a  year. 

The  incompletness  of  these  funds  for  present  needs  is 
shown  in  the  following  list  of  amounts  agreed  upon  by  the 
advisory  committees  of  the  farmers  themselves  to  be  asked 
of  the  present  legislature: 


Annually 


Biennua.lly 


For  Instruction  (College) . .  .... 

$  70,000. 

$140,000. 

For  Buildings  (College  and  Station) . 

For  Soil  Investigations  (Station) . 

100,000. 

162,500. 

200,000. 

For  Crop  Investigations  (Station) . 

30,000. 

60,000. 

For  Live  Stock  Investigations  (Station) .... 

70,000. 

140,000. 

102,300. 

For  Dairy  Investigations  (Station) . . 

51,150. 

For  Horticultural  Investigations  (Station). 

40,000. 

80,000. 

For  Floricultural  Investigations  (Station). 

17,500. 

35,000. 

$378,650. 

$919,800. 

These  amounts  may  seem  large  and  in  a  sense  they  are 
but  not  for  its  undertaking.  Think  first  of  what  they  can 
accomplish  for  a  commonwealth  and  what  an  agriculture  it 
can  build  up  if  such  a  policy  is  instituted  and  pursued.  But 
can  a  state  endure  such  an  expense?  Again,  all  things  are 
relative.  The  largest  of  these  amounts  is  for  investigation 
and  their  total  is  less  than  a  cent  an  acre  a  year  for  Illinois 
lands.  Surely  the  results  of  experiments  are  worth  many 
times  this  amount  aside  from  the  fact  that  the  increased  earn- 


28 


ing  power  of  the  state  because  of  the  work  of  the  station  has 
already  done  more  than  pays  all  expenses  of  the  station,  the 
whole  university  and  of  the  normal  schools  besides .  So  we 
are  asking  for  no  new  money,  only  for  a  larger  share  of 
what  has  already  been  earned. 

It  is  significant,  too,  that  while  Chicago  pays  40  percent 
of  the  Illinois  tax,  she  has  never  demurred  at  anything  that 
would  build  up  the  agriculture  of  the  state  in  which  the 
prosperity  of  that  great  city  so  largely  rests.  Chicago  is 
not  frightened  by  the  size  of  a  proposition,  if  only  it  pays  in 
the  end. 

Again  these  amounts  are  small  when  compared  with  the 
perfectly  stupendous  outlays  for  charitable  and  worthy  yet 
non-productive  purposes.  The  following  table  shows  how 
these  amounts  compare  in  Illinois  for  the  current  biennium. 

Relative  Amounts  Devoted  to  Public  Purposes. 

Illinois  — T  wo- Y  ears-1907-8  . 


Productive 

Agricultural  Experiment  Station 

Agricultural  College . . . . 

Total  Agricultural  Education.  . . 

Universi  ty . 

Normal  Schools  (five)  . . 


$  205,000—1  percent 
125,000 —  i  percent 
330,000 — 1|  percent 
1,841,290 — 9  percent 
941,974— 4i  percent 


Total  Educational 


$3,113,264 — 15  percent 


Non-productive 

Insane . 

Penal 

Defective  children 
Other  dependents. 


$4,696,000— 23-f-percent 
2,329, 100— 12-j-percent 
972, 900— 4i-fpercent 
1,669,402—  8-fpercent 


Total  non-productive 


$9,667,402— 48+percent 


This  is  more  clearly  comprehended  when  shown  in  the 
graphic  form  as  in  the  following  chart,  see  Fig.  2. 

By  this  we  see  that  Illinois  is  putting  into  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  its  agriculture  less  than  half  as  much  as  into  the 
education  and  care  of  its  defective  children.  By  this  we  see 


Productive  Non-Productive 


30 


that  our  state  university  as  a  whole  is  not  yet  on  a  level  with 
our  penal  institutions:  that  is,  that  our  penitentiaries  are 
now  absorbing  a  larger  share  of  the  public  resources  than 
are  devoted  to  higher  education  and  research  in  the  univer¬ 
sity  and  nearly  as  much  as  the  university  and  five  normal 
schools  combined.* 

By  this  we  see  that  Illinois  could  increase  her  endow¬ 
ment  for  agriculture  more  than  fifteen  times  and  still  devote 
less  to  the  development  of  this  great  industry  than  it  costs 
to  care  for  her  insane.  By  this  we  see,  too,  that  48  percent 
of  all  our  public  outlay  is  for  non-producing  purposes. 

Now  the  care  of  our  dependents  is  a  moral  charge  upon 
us  and  I  would  not  shirk  it,  but  it  produces  nothing  and  con¬ 
tributes  nothing  to  development  and  I  propose  a  new  plan — 
the  Dollar  for  Dollar  principle.  I  mean  by  this,  that  every 
time  we  expend  a  dollar  in  charity  for  non-productive  pur¬ 
poses,  we  put  down  another  dollar  to  develop  the  resources 
of  the  state,  t 

I  wish  I  could  in  some  vivid  way  impress  upon  you  the 
enormous  discrepancy  in  this  respect  at  present  and  make 
you  understand  and  appreciate  how  exclusively,  almost,  our 
public  outlays  are  going  into  non-productive  channels.  If, 
for  example,  we  denote  the  amount  expended  in  Illinois  for 
the  College  of  Agriculture  and  for  the  work  of  the  Experiment 
Station  by  the  distance  from  Boston  to  Buffalo  then  the 
amounts  devoted  to  the  care  of  the  defective  children  on  the 
same  scale  would  reach  from  Boston  to  Salt  Lake  City: 
those  for  our  prisoners  would  pass  the  western  coast  line 
and  reach  out  into  the  Pacific  and  beyond  the  Hawaiian  Is¬ 
lands,  while  the  expense  of  the  insane  on  the  same  scale 
would  reach  from  Boston  across  our  continent,  across  the 
Pacific  and  into  the  heart  of  Mongolia  in  Central  Asia;  or  if 
we  should  go  to  the  east  it  would  land  in  almost  the  same 

*It  is  significant  in  this  connection  that  Michigan  has  spent  almost  equal  amounts 
of  money  since  its  admission  to  the  Union  on  its  great  university  and  its  penitentiary 
at  Jackson. 

tSee  Peoria  Address— The  Development  of  the  Natural  Resources  of  the  State. 


# 


31 


spot,  reaching,  as  it  does,  a  little  over  half  way  round  the 
world. 

If  you  combine  all  the  expenditures  for  all  non-produc¬ 
tive  dependents,  it  would  reach  around  the  world  and  over¬ 
lap  a  thousand  miles  beside,  against  which  our  little  dis¬ 
tances  from  Boston  to  Buffalo  as  representing  agriculture  is 
not  even  a  respectable  Sabbath  day’s  journey. 

With  comparisons  such  as  these  it  is  folly  to  say  that  a 
state  cannot  afford  the  most  liberal  support  of  college  and 
station  work.  Charity  is  commendable  and  in  every  way 
worthy  but  after  all  it  is  non-productive  and  money  so  ex¬ 
pended  is  gone  forever.  Statesmanship  dictates  not  only 
charity,  but  development. 

The  farmers  of  Illinois  produce  every  day  of  the  year, 
winter  and  summer,  in  sunshine  or  in  rain,  a  million  and  a 
half  of  dollars  of  new  wealth.  They  propose  this  winter, 
with  legislative  consent,  to  devote  a  little  over  a  half  day’s 
work  to  this  business  of  agricultural  instruction  and  investi¬ 
gation,  looking  to  the  further  development  of  our  greatest 
producing  industry.  Yes,  all  things  are  relative,  and  it  is 
proportions  and  needs  rather  than  magnitudes  that  we  must 
study. 

Agricultural  improvement,  is  enormously  productive 
and  money  expended  in  its  development  is  money  not  ex¬ 
pended  but  money  invested,  for  the  returns  are  both  enor¬ 
mous  and  perpetual.  Every  bushel  added  to  the  yield  of  Illi¬ 
nois  cornfields  adds  three  million  dollars  to  the  income  of  the 
state.  Every  disease  and  every  insect  and  fungous  enemy 
which  we  learn  to  control  saves  enormous  values  to  the  coun¬ 
try.* 

Every  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  soil  manage¬ 
ment  is  of  direct  public  benefit  as  surely  as  are  improved 
methods  of  mining  and  every  step  towards  a  permanent  agri¬ 
culture  is  a  step  along  the  road  that  must  be  traveled  before 
we  can  talk  about  an  assured  future: 


*Bitter  rot  alone  took  a  million  dollars’  worth  of  apples  out  of  four  counties  of 
Illinois  without  warning  in  1902. 


32 


Yes,  in  every  way  money  expended  for  agricultural  de¬ 
velopment  is  not  an  outlay,  it  is  money  invested  in  the  safest 
bank  on  earth — the  soil  of  the  commonwealth  and  the  people 
on  whom  we  must  depend  for  its  management  and  in  whom 
the  balance  of  power  will  always  rest.  Cannot  any  state  af¬ 
ford  to  devote  as  much  to  its  agriculture  as  to  its  prisoners? 
Can  it  afford  not  to  do  it. 

They  cannot  afford  not  to  do  it,  first,  because  agricul¬ 
ture  needs  it,  and,  second,  because  the  development  of  our 
producing  industries  and  of  the  productive  powers  of  the 
people  is  the  best  protection  against  the  crushing  burden  of 
non-producing  dependents  as  it  is  the  best  guaranty  for  the 
future.  I  therefore  close  with  the  thought  of  dollar  for  dol¬ 
lar:  that  is,  a  dollar  for  development  against  every  dollar 
needed  for  charity.  As  a  corollary  to  this  proposition  and 
in  behalf  of  agriculture,  I  propose  as  a  temporary  policy 
that  as  much  be  devoted  to  the  development  of  our  agricul¬ 
ture  as  to  the  support  of  our  penitentiaries.  Surely  we 
would  not  be  wise  if  we  do  less,  and  the  askings  of  your  ad¬ 
visory  committees  is  not  only  sane  and  safe  but  well  within 
not  only  the  needs  of  the  work  but  of  what  it  is  wise  to 
devote  to  agricultural  development.  Will  you  not  endorse 
these  askings  and  demand  their  appropriation? 

Illinois’  share  of  the  federal  appropriation  to  the  Depart¬ 
ment  of  Agriculture  is  now  over  a  million  dollars.  Will 
she  not  duplicate  that  for  Illinois  Agriculture? 

I  beg  of  you  in  the  strongest  terms  to  study  these  ques¬ 
tions  in  all  their  meaning  both  now  and  in  the  future.  And 
when  you  see  their  full  significance  and  real  bearing,  be  out¬ 
spoken  and  insistent  that  your  commonwealth  at  once  adopt 
policies  that  shall  put  agriculture  on  a  new  basis  both  eco¬ 
nomically  and  educationally.  Ask  it:  urge  it:  plead  for  it: 
demand  it,  for  it  is  yours. 

This  is  agricultural  development  and  the  meaning  of  it. 


/ 


Kfl 


UNIVER9fTY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 


3  0112  082287332 


